Dateline Dispatches: Around the World in Ten Days
DAY ONE Thursday, 16 November 2000

London

Even the highest expectations can fall short. Before the launch of its report at Canary Wharf, the WCD expected as many as 300 attendees might arrive at Cabot Hall. By 11 am, more than 400 had packed the spacious auditorium, standing room only.

WCD's press office hoped for 30 journalists. More than 90 reporters showed up.

HRH the Prince of Orange addresses the auditorium

Rather than an appearance by most Commissioners, all 12 stood in unison - Medha Patkar arriving from India just that morning - to sign the ceremonial document while cameras snapped away.

And then South African former President Nelson Mandela rose. A hush fell over the crowded floor. Ignoring doctor's orders to stay at home and rest, Mandela made the journey from Cape Town to speak clearly from his own experience wrestling with displacement, power, poverty and dams.

"Political freedom alone is still not enough if you lack clean water," said Mandela. "Freedom alone is not enough without light to read at night, without time or access to water to irrigate your farm, without the ability to catch fish to feed your family. For this reason the struggle for sustainable development nearly equals the struggle for political freedom. They can grow together or they can unravel each other."

Mandela recalled how, under his Administration, then-Water Minister Kader Asmal authorised one of the largest dams in the Southern Hemisphere, and that, increasingly aware of the controversies and impacts, both men resented having to choose the lesser of two evils: relocate some so that all may have water, or forgo a dam, thus slowing human development and increasing urban stress.

Commissioner Judy Henderson (left) with IUCN Director General, Maritta Koch-Weser

"Rather than single out dams for excessive blame, or credit," Mandela advised, "we must learn to answer: "It is all of us!" All of us must wrestle with the difficult questions we face. It is one thing to find fault with an existing system. It is another thing altogether, a more difficult task, to replace it with an approach that is better."

The general consensus by those who had read the Report was that the framework it advocated is, or if implemented, can be, a far better approach. No one is under the illusion that implementing the World Commission on Dams report will be easy, and many agencies and institutions will take some persuading to review their water and energy development policies. The report is an important start, however, in ushering in an era where constructive dialogue and consensus overrides division, polarisation and inertia.

The result is a milestone in the evolution of dams as a development option and offers a clear charter for the future - a charter by which every dam in the world can and should measure itself.